{I like to walk around amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world.} (g.Santayana)

Paulo's Shecada; and where are the nightcrawlers? / "they are very musical in their tastes, and have wings which are arranged slantwise, like the roof of a house" / circa spring 2013

Now, the cicadas are, almost without Exception, musical. But their song
is produced exclusively by the male insects, who are provided for the
purpose with a curious resonant, drum-like instrument. It consists of a
cavity with a stretched membrane, whose vibration, controlled by
muscles, sets up the familiar chirping or stridulating noise so well
known to all who have lived in Italy. In warm sunshine these insect
vocalists keep up a continuous concert of sweet sounds, intended no
doubt to attract the females. Resonators in the body increase the volume
of the note, and make it carry further; we had one cicada in our house
in Jamaica which sang so loud that we always knew it as the prima donna.
We were wrong in the gender, I admit: we ought rather to have said the
first tenor; for the females have no song: a fact much commented upon by
the malicious Greek poet— doubtless a married man, tied to a loquacious
Athenian lady :—